BtVS: The Soldier of Fortune-Part 1
by Summersbro3
Summary: In the aftermath of Glory's destruction a dangerous mercenary comes to Sunnydale. Who is the Soldier of Fortune, and why is the Watchers Council so scared of him?


Title: Prologue Series: Soldier of Fortune

**Title: BtVS- The Soldier of Fortune-Part 1**

**Author: Summersbro3**

**Rating: ****R for graphic violence, highly disturbing imagery, and mature sexual themes**

**Genre: Action, Drama**

**Summary: A mercenary vampire with a mysterious past arrives in Sunnydale.**

**Spoilers: General through Season 5**

**Distribution: Just let me know so that I can visit your site**

**Disclaimer: The "Soldier of Fortune" is mine. Joss and David own everyone else, and then they let people like Marti Noxon have creative control of their lives. If I ran Mutant Enemy, Seasons 4&5 would have been a lot better than they were.**

**Feedback: Please. Flames will be answered with hotter, more emotionally destructive flames. Send email to [lukescorpio@netscape.net][1]**

**Timeline: This story takes place in the summer after Season 5. Continuity diverges from canon just before the season finale.**

**Special Thanks: **This piece is dedicated to **MazalHaMidbar, my _awesome_ beta reader, ****Ulukinatme, my best friend and new roommate, ****Skank, my weekly Buffy partner, and ****Talon (Summersbro4?).**

"Gotcha! You bloodsucking-" Buffy spun around with superhuman speed and agility, tackling a young man and beginning to bring a sharpened stake down at his chest. "Xander?" she abruptly stopped inches from his chest and helped him up. "Xander, what the hell are you doing? I could have killed you." 

"It's almost five in the morning, Buffy. You never came home or called anyone, and Willow got worried and called me. What are you doing this late? If there hasn't been any action yet tonight, there's not going to be. You of all people should know that."

"There's something out there, Xander. It's been watching me for two weeks. It never does anything, just watches, like it's waiting for something. I'm getting tired of it, just being toyed with like this, knowing there's something out there that I can't touch or fight. I want it dead, Xander." 

"Look, if this thing has waited this long, it can wait another night. Go home and get some sleep, Buffy. We'll all come and help you kill this thing tomorrow night." He smiled down at her as he finished, that quiet, adoring smile that only he could give that made her feel a thousand feet tall. 

"You're right — I'm no good to anybody like this. We'll finish this tomorrow." She smiled back at him.

"We'll finish you tonight." A black-clad vampire snarled as he stepped out from behind a crypt holding a baseball bat. Four more of the soulless creatures appeared behind him, each brandishing a makeshift weapon indigenous to inner-city street gangs. They charged the Slayer and her friend in a manner typical of young minions, snarling and swinging wildly. Both humans had sharpened stakes in their hands within instants, and each of them dusted two of the inexperienced vampires in less than a minute. The leader turned and ran at that point, still holding his bat. Buffy and Xander chased him into the largest crypt in the cemetery, stakes at the ready— and stopped dead when they saw what was inside. Standing in the far corner of the mausoleum was a pale, inhuman creature, which could only be a master vampire.

"Hello, Slayer." Buffy cringed at the sound of the demon's gravelly voice, remembering the night she faced another of his kind. The Master had defeated her. In a strictly medical sense she had died that night, and the memory still haunted her. As it came closer, its face twisted in a demonic grin. "So good of you to join us." It gestured at the minion they had chased inside. "Philip, the door." The minion started toward the door, and Xander rushed it, but, displaying far more skill than it had earlier, it knocked him out cold with the heavy bat it was holding. 

"Xander!" Buffy screamed as her friend went down and then turned back to the albino creature in front of her. "I swear you'll pay for that."

"I think not, Slayer. You're no match for the two of us." He began walking toward her as the younger vampire barred the heavy stone door. Buffy blocked his first punch easily and countered with the stake in her right hand, trying to finish the fight early. She never finished the attack, doubling over in pain as the creature slammed its knee into her stomach. The ancient vampire swatted the stake out of her hand and hit her with a massive right uppercut; as she reeled back, he followed up by throwing her back into the corner that he had originally started in. As she tried to stand, she saw Philip lift Xander to his feet and lean over him to bite his exposed neck. She knew she could never stop him in time, Xander was as good as dead, and all she could do was watch.

Just as the creature's fangs touched the young man's neck, the door shattered, kicked inward by some inhuman force. Philip looked up at the open door and exploded into a cloud of dust as a razor-sharp throwing knife flew through his body and imbedded itself in the wall beside Buffy. The master vampire that Buffy had been fighting turned his attention to the door as a young man stepped through and grew angry, obviously recognizing the man who had dusted his minion. In the dim light, Buffy could barely make out the man's features as he stepped into the room. He was at least six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a solid build. His hair was straight, shoulder length, but in the dark, Buffy couldn't make out the color. He was dressed in body armor of a style Buffy had never seen, and a linen scarf covered the bottom half of his face and his neck. As soon as he was in between Xander and the albino demon, he drew a long, straight sword of Japanese origin from a scabbard on the back of his belt. 

He pulled down his scarf to expose his face as he started to speak, revealing handsome, masculine features. "And you're no match for me, Kelan. You shouldn't have attacked the Slayer. You're lucky my employer isn't here to deal with this personally — he's even less merciful than I am." There was only a hint of a cruel smile on his face as he threatened the millennia-old demon.

"How dare you speak to me that way, you disloyal piece of filth?" The Master vampire took a broadsword from its place on the wall and brandished it at the young man.

"So that's what the mighty master vampire Kelan is reduced to, petty name calling." He sighed and replaced his scarf. "I'm a mercenary you idiot, I kill whoever and whatever I'm paid to kill."

The albino demon charged the young man, growling in typical vampire fashion. Kelan was obviously very skilled with a sword, and obviously very outmatched. The young man's sword moved so fast that Buffy could barely see it; the only person she had ever seen use a sword that well was Angel, and she doubted that she could take this young man in her current state. The vampire became more desperate as the fight went on, until the young mercenary cleanly sliced his right arm off, spraying cold blood across the room. Kelan screamed and clutched at the bleeding stump of his arm, and the young man sliced off his legs at mid-thigh, sending the ancient fiend to the floor, prone and dismembered.

"You bastard, who sent you? Who had to hire the Soldier of Fortune to kill me?" Kelan hissed at the young man. 

Buffy strained to listen to the response but was unable to hear what he whispered to the dismembered creature on the floor.

"A-!" The ancient vampire never finished as the young man slammed his sword through the back of his throat. He drew a Zippo cigarette lighter from his belt and set Kelan on fire. The demon lacerated his hand trying to pull the sword out of his face, screaming until he finally dusted in a blaze of energy.

Buffy was bent over Xander, trying to rouse him, when a pair of gauntleted hands lifted the young man to his feet. When she made eye contact with her presumed rescuer, it confirmed what she already suspected. Instead of the human features that she had seen earlier she was staring directly into the gameface of a mature vampire. His features were leonine in a hauntingly familiar way, and Buffy held eye contact for several seconds before she spoke.

"You're the one who's been following me, aren't you?" Her expression was neutral as she eyed the mercenary.

He just smiled. "We'll meet again, Slayer. Count on it." His features shifted back to those of a normal human, and he walked over to the burning skeleton of Kelan. He wrenched his sword from the stone floor, and looked down at the remains below him. He crushed Kelan's skull beneath his boot and silently walked out of the crypt.

"Buffy, who the hell was that?" Xander slowly leaned away from Buffy, standing under his own power. 

Buffy slowly walked over to the back of the crypt and wrenched a razor-sharp throwing knife out of the wall. The mercenary vampire had left it behind, obviously on purpose. "I don't know, Xander." She walked over to him, placing the knife in her purse. "Let's get out of here."

A small blonde woman walked into the Magic Box. As she stepped inside a bell rang, drawing the attention of a middle-aged British man who was adjusting several crystals in a display case. He locked the case and walked over to her. "Buffy, I'm glad that you're all right. Anya told me what happened to you and Xander last night. She said there was a Master vampire involved, and some kind of mysterious swordsman?" His tone indicated that the account he received had been less than complete.

"The vampire who attacked us was named Kelan. He looked and fought exactly like the Master."

"But you defeated him, and then chased off this nameless swordsman." Giles added hopefully.

Buffy smiled wanly. "I guess that minion hit Xander harder than I thought. Kelan was winning when the swordsman appeared. One of his minions was about to bite Xander when this flew through his chest." Buffy took the throwing knife from the previous night out of her purse, handing it to Giles. "I pried it out of a granite wall twenty feet behind where the vampire had been standing. The man who threw it fought Kelan with a long Japanese sword."

"So he defeated the vampire."

"He didn't defeat him Giles, he butchered him. He cut his arms and legs off, and pinned him to the floor like a bug in one of those display case thingies. Then he burned him to death. I'm all for vamp destruction, but this was horrible to watch. He kept screaming while it he burned and there was nothing that it he could do to get away." She shuddered at the memory of what had happened in the crypt.

"Obviously, whoever this man was, he has quite a score to settle with the vampire race." Giles kept an even expression, only slightly surprised by what Buffy told him. 

"Somehow I doubt that." Buffy said, half sighing.

"What do you mean?"

"He was a vampire, Giles. He kicked a stone door in half and buried a throwing knife in three inches of granite. There was also the little matter of his gameface. Kelan called him the 'Soldier of Fortune' before he killed him."

Giles' face assumed a horrified expression. "Oh dear God."

"What? What did I say?

"Buffy, the Soldier of Fortune is someone who I had hoped to never hear of again. He's a fairly young vampire, most accounts put him at only 160 or so, but he's supposed to be nearly unstoppable, like a one-man mercenary army. He killed three Slayers before the Council had him assassinated. He relies on a variety of weapons both scientific and magical to augment his already formidable fighting abilities, and he'll kill anything for the right price."

"If he's so dangerous, why didn't you warn me about him? You could have at least squeezed him into one of those lectures you used to give me."

"He's supposed to be dead, Buffy. The Council summoned a demon named Vocah to deal with him. We were assured that he perished in his battle with Vocah, and the Council decided that it would be best if no one spoke of him from that point on. The Soldier of Fortune humiliated us and became a legend in the process. We were trying to eliminate his legacy; erase our failure. We never thought that he could have returned."

Anya set an open book on the table. It was fairly new, apparently published within the last twenty years, and the open page showed an artist's drawing of the man Buffy had seen the previous night. "That's him, Giles. That's who we saw in that crypt last night." Giles' face sank as Buffy confirmed his fears about the identity of the vampire mercenary.

"I met him once." Anya said. "It was almost a hundred years ago, and he was finishing a job for D'Hoffryn, some messy assassination business in central Asia. I needed an assassin, somebody to deal with the husband of one of my women, and he volunteered to give me a good rate since he wanted to get more business from my boss. Anyway, this woman wanted someone to beat her husband worse than he beat her, and that seemed to be exactly the kind of thing that he did best, so I hired him for the job. I cursed a knife for him, made it unbreakable by any natural means, and in exchange, he walked into the tavern where the woman's husband liked to drink and beat him to death with his bare hands. The man never had a chance — he was barely recognizable as human when it was over."

Buffy shuddered at yet another highly disturbing mental picture. "Didn't anyone try to stop him? I mean, most guys wouldn't just stand by while someone beat one of their drinking buddies to death."

"Several tried, actually. They all failed rather miserably. Most of them didn't survive the attempt. He would just crush their throat or break their neck and keep going. He never let up or shifted his attention from what he was doing. It actually scared me a little."

"Do we know anything about his past or his origins, anything I might be able to use against him if we end up fighting each other." Buffy was annoyed by the vague profile that the book gave of the mercenary vampire. "I mean, this doesn't even tell his name or who sired him or anything." Buffy slammed the book shut. "What about some other book, one of the bigger, older ones."

"That's just the thing, Buffy, he has always been very secretive. Only a very elite group of the most powerful sorcerers, vampires and demons even know how to contact him. There are rumors that a handful of other vampires know the truth of his origins, but reaching them would be impossible, not to mention futile. All that we really know is that everything he goes after turns up dead." 

"Except Vocah, right. How did he beat him? I mean, why don't we just figure out what Vocah did, and maybe we can find some kind of weakness. Or, even better, why don't we just summon him again and let him deal with this Soldier of Fortune?" Buffy's tone was very hopeful at this point. "We'll just let the little demon soldiers fight amongst themselves and… Why are you shaking your head, Giles?" Buffy's tone turned suspiciously inquisitive as Giles grimaced and began looking down at the floor.

"First of all, Buffy, Vocah was one of the most evil creatures to ever exist. Half the reason that the Council refuses to speak about the Soldier of Fortune is that we'd rather not talk about the fact that we had dealings with the likes of Vocah." Giles looked off into space, his expression showing a great deal of guilt, anger, and regret over a choice that he had nothing to do with.

"Second?" Buffy wasn't sure what could top what Giles had already said.

"He's dead, Buffy. Last year in Los Angeles, someone summoned him for a particularly nasty bit of wet-works, and he was killed with his own weapon by the very man he was summoned to counter." Buffy's eyes lit up with a mixture of apprehension and adoration as Giles paused. "One of his abilities was to generate copies of his weapon, the Darkscythe. He intentionally allowed one of these copies to fall into Angel's hands, and he was killed in their ensuing duel." His tone showed only a hint of satisfaction about what had happened to the Warrior of Darkness. "In any case, the Council has records about the Soldier that aren't available under normal circumstances. They should be willing to unseal them if it means avoiding another Slayer death. Hopefully these will tell us more about any potential weaknesses that we could use against him." He finished wiping off his glasses and put them back on. "Until then, we should concentrate on counteracting his armaments. Without his arsenal, I'd imagine that he's quite beatable."

"He was wearing body armor, an engraved breastplate that covered his chest and back, so he's probably stakeproof." Giles nodded and gestured for Anya to write down what Buffy was saying; she had become an excellent assistant in recent months and had learned to follow most of his instructions just before he could give them. "His pants were loose and tucked into his boots. The boots came up to his knees; they were leather, with metal plates in key areas. He had gauntlets that extended the whole length of his forearm. They were leather too, with metal reinforcements, and they felt warm when he brushed against me. I think they may have some kind of power."

"But his head was uncovered, which means that you may be able to decapitate him if necessary," Giles noted.

"I thought so too at first, but there was something funny about how he moved his neck, and he wore a long linen scarf around his neck and face, almost like he's trying to hide something."

"He may be wearing some kind of collar to protect his neck. This would probably account for what you saw. What about weapons?"

"All I could really see was his sword. It was longer than any of the swords in your weapons cabinet, straight and single edged. It looked Japanese, and I don't think it was made of steel. It cut through stone way too easily, and Kelan's sword looked like a dog's chew-toy when their fight ended."

"Titanium, most likely an alloy. He probably has all of his weapons custom made." He held up the throwing knife that Buffy had brought him earlier. "You said that he threw this through a vampire and still managed to bury it in a granite wall?"

"Yeah, if I could get my hands on some of those…" She trailed off, watching the glare on the knife as Giles examined the engravings on it. 

"It's a gypsy curse." Giles sounded shocked.

"So, why is that a surprise?"

"It's written in Japanese, Buffy. There are only a handful of people in the world who could impart that curse to a weapon, and none of them would ordinarily inscribe a curse in that language."

Anya spoke up at this point. "There are a few demons that might, for a price. But…"

"Might do what?" Willow and Tara entered the building together hand in hand; both were far too happy for Giles' taste.

"Willow, Tara, you may want to sit down. We have a bit of a situation on our hands."

"A bit of a situation," Buffy parroted. "And World War II was a playground fight."

"That's enough, Buffy." Willow and Tara sat down at the large table, noticeably moving their chairs closer together. "Why don't you fill them in on what happened last night. We're going to need everyone that we have for this."

Willy thumbed through the wad of bills in his hands and smiled. "It's been a real pleasure doing business with you, sir. You're welcome in my bar any time."

A powerfully built vampire looked down at the disheveled man behind the bar and scowled, baring his razor-edged fangs. "Just hope the information you sold me is accurate — otherwise you'll be begging to die before I kill you." He slammed down a final shot of whisky and stormed out, giving the bouncer a stern look as he passed. 

"Not much with the original threats, is he?" A well-dressed young man looked up from his drink and gave Willy an amused look.

Willy knew he wasn't a regular at the bar, so he sized up his customer before he responded. He was wearing a cream- colored sweater that covered his neck and a pair of leather pants, along with a very expensive-looking leather jacket. His hair was blonde, with only a hint of dark roots, and it obscured his features when he was leaning forward over his drink. Unlike most of Willy's customers, he was very well tanned, but the crimson color of his drink immediately marked him as a vampire. "Refill?" Willy gestured toward his customer's empty highball glass.

"Please." The blonde man held up his glass in the bartender's direction. "Cuervo Gold and blood, human preferably." Willy poured a shot of each into his customer's glass, deciding that the vampire was quite drunk and equally harmless. He took a sip of the fresh drink and smiled in a contented, drunken fashion.

Willy kept a straight face until he turned his back to his customer to put the bottles back on the rack. He was probably an errant minion, a freshly turned fledgling vampire out celebrating his new state of unlife. By closing time he would be too smashed to stand up and would freely part with his designer ensemble. Willy knew several fencers who would pay handsomely for clothes like that, and his bouncer would be more than a match for a drunken fledge.

"Beat it, pretty boy, that's my seat." A greasy, denim-clad vampire was looking down over Willy's new favorite customer with a sneer plastered across his face. Willy silently swore as he recognized the speaker. Tyler had been in Sunnydale longer than the Slayer, almost ten years, and was one of Willy's regulars. He led a small but powerful gang and never backed down from members of his own kind. Willy sighed as he realized that he wouldn't get to steal the blonde man's designer ensemble after all, as he would be leaving immediately, whether it would be as flesh or dust had yet to be decided.

"I don't know. I'm starting to like it here. Why don't you just go find a new seat so this doesn't turn unpleasant." He never looked up from his drink as he spoke.

"Dust," thought Willy. "Definitely dust."

"What the hell did you just say? Do you know who you're talking to?" The greasy vampire was enraged when he heard this obnoxious response.

"No, and I don't really care. Now why don't you just get the hell out of here and stay out of my way?" The blonde man was only slightly irritated.

"You little bastard! Nobody talks to me that way!" Tyler slammed his greasy left hand down his antagonist's immaculate leather jacket, snarling as he grabbed the obviously inferior creature who had insulted him. The blonde man's eyes glowed gold as his drunken expression was replaced by a look of ice-cold hatred. Willy watched as his human visage twisted into an obviously mature vampiric gameface. He realized with no small amount of horror that the creature sitting at his bar was no fledge and was probably at least a century older than Tyler. Most vampires' gameface remained deformed and gnarled for a century or so, more ugly than anything else, but after a time it would start to change. Vampires who had survived more than a century began to take on a more refined, truly evil appearance than the younger animalistic minions. The creature that Tyler had the misfortune to piss off was a mature vampire who had been sired, not turned, sometime before the twentieth century, andhe was homicidally angry. Willy hoped that Tyler's death would be quick and that his minions would have the sense to run; they had all been good customers, and the enraged vampire at the bar was liable to torture them for a long time if he could get his hands on them. 

A low feline growl was Tyler's only warning before the end came. The man at the bar spun around, locking Tyler's left elbow with his left arm, and smashed the back of his right elbow into Tyler's face before he could react. There was a sickening crunch as his nose and jaw both simultaneously shattered, spraying blood and teeth across that corner of the bar. The bouncer, a hulking gray-skinned demon, came running toward the fight, not seeing Willy's frantic motions to desist. Not missing a beat, the blonde vampire leapt into the air and hit both of his assailants with a right scissor kick, his right leg firing straight forward into the bouncer's chest and his left firing back and to the side to catch Tyler. Just as he started to come down, he rolled his hips and reversed the kick, hitting the pair with a left scissor. Both staggered back as he touched down, and a gleaming knife pierced Tyler, dusting him instantly and imbedding itself in the back wall of the bar. A short ninja sword appeared from inside his jacket and he nearly decapitated the bouncer with a left backhand slash. Willy began swearing as the bar's other patrons rose to their feet in shock, some transforming their features into their true demonic faces, others reaching for concealed weapons. Willy ducked behind the bar, praying that he wouldn't be hit by stray gunfire, and that this new super-vamp wasn't going to completely destroy his bar while he decimated his clientele.

A Chaos Demon led the charge, hoping to overpower this unknown menace with his sheer bulk. He doubled over in pain as his opponent used the bouncer's severed head as a projectile; the deceased gray demon's horns dug into his flesh, bringing him to a screeching halt; a spinning hook kick caught his jaw nanoseconds later, breaking his neck like a twig. The blonde vampire switched his sword to his right hand as the pack closed in; his eyes were still devoid of any emotion other than pure hate as he planned the next few seconds, remaining several steps ahead of his attackers. A beetlelike demon clad in heavy rags spun as he caught it with a right roundhouse kick, and he used its chitinous body as a shield from a shotgun-wielding Brachen demon. The shotgun blast splattered the insectoid creature, nearly ripping it in half. If the vampire had caught any of the blast, he wasn't showing it as he leapt forward, stabbing the misguided Brachen thought the chest. He tore his sword free and caught the gun before it touched the floor. The fight ended in seconds as he pumped the twelve gauge sawed-off and blasted his remaining three assailants into pulp at near-point-blank range. 

He looked down at his gore-splattered clothes, sighing and shifting back to his human features. He walked behind the bar and hauled Willy up by the collar. "This was a twenty-five-hundred- dollar designer ensemble. Now it's a really expensive engine rag," he said, looking down at his ruined clothing. Willy felt a stream of warm urine run down his left leg and the wad of bills that he had been clutching as he huddled behind the bar fell from his nerveless fingers. He realized that despite everything that had happened between them, he actually hoped that the Slayer would walk in; she was the only one who had a prayer against the creature that was effortlessly holding him up with one hand and looking at him like some kind of offensive insect. The money caught his attention and his expression became slightly less hostile as he reached down and grabbed the wad of bills, never letting go of Willy's collar. He thumbed through it quickly. "This should pretty much cover my clothes." He paused as if about to continue as he pocketed the cash, and Willy regained some hope that he might live. "But, you know, my employer really doesn't like how you've been acting toward the Slayer lately, and he sent me to rectify that situation permanently." 

Time, along with Willy's heart, seemed to stop as the creature shifted into gameface for the last time in Willy's life. He had heard stories about a pretty-boy vampire assassin who was supposed to have been bad as hell and every bit as dangerous. He thought that this so called 'Soldier of Fortune' was a myth, a fictional pop-culture hero, like Batman for the undead. As a set of razor-sharp canine teeth lacerated his neck and the world started to grow dim, he realized that he was wrong, dead wrong. He collapsed on the floor, fading fast, and watched his killer take the bottle of tequila that he had obviously enjoyed so much off the shelf and smile as he shifted back to his human features. Willy knew, despite what the vampire said, that his death was little more than a message to someone else; he just couldn't figure out who. This final question plagued Willy as everything went black; he had been an information broker as much as a bartender, and the thought that he himself would die with such an important question unanswered bothered him. 

The vampire mercenary nudged the corpses on the floor with the toe of his shoe, making sure that none of them had somehow survived his attack. He had known exactly who Tyler was, and he knew where his minions made their nest. That would be his next target. Tyler's minions had run when the fighting started, and it was severely unprofessional to leave live enemies in a position where they could cause trouble in the future. He walked silently into the darkness, planning his next moves. He tore off his ruined clothes and tossed them into a Dumpster, revealing his body armor and loose-fitting pants. A Duffel bag containing his boots, gauntlets and scarf was hidden behind the dumpster, and he put them on quickly, sheathing his sword after he wiped the blade on the hem of his ruined sweater. He hadn't brought any real firepower into Willy's, and he decided to leave before any real unpleasantness started. 

This was almost too easy. Hopefully that would change when the Slayer finally became involved in the situation and the real business at hand began.

Spike knew something was wrong for at least a block before he got to Willy's. The acrid smell of fresh demon blood assaulted his vampire senses long before he reached his favorite drinking establishment, and he walked in slowly, unsure of who or what might still be inside. The decapitated bouncer was the first thing Spike saw when he entered. The gray–skinned demon was in a heap on the floor; blood was barely dripping from the corpse's neck, pooling beneath it and gradually dissolving the filthy tile floor. Spike recognized the bouncer's species, and obviously so had whoever was responsible. Decapitation was the only way to kill a Ghast demon, and aside from being highly corrosive, its blood was poisonous to the living as well as the undead. The man who had torn up the bar had been prepared, and the bar's patrons probably never saw it coming. That showed professionalism, and that bothered Spike. Most demons tended to be base and animalistic when it came to fighting; only a mature vampire or a few of the elder species of Hell would go to the trouble of planning this kind of attack, and Spike was in no particular mood to go head to head with any of those. The rest of the bar showed more of the same; some kind of insect demon and a Brachen were at the front of a group of shotgun-blasted bodies, and separated from those by only a few feet was a dead Chaos demon with what closer inspection revealed to be the bouncer's head imbedded in his stomach. Spike smiled when he saw the Chaos demon; regardless of why Drusilla had left him, a Chaos demon had played a large part in it, and he was still seriously considering devoting a decade or two to wiping out their entire race at some point. Behind the bar he found Willy, drained of blood, lying in a puddle of urine. This bothered Spike even more than the massacre. Willy had been off limits; he was an information broker, and he ran the only demon bar in Sunnydale. Whoever did this was new, and he was obviously a powerful vampire, judging by the carnage.

Rumors had been circulating that a Master Vampire from Europe was relocating to the Hellmouth ever since Glory had been destroyed. Even though no one really knew who it was, Spike had several pretty good ideas, and this type of attack could be attributed to any of them. A token massacre in an obvious location would serve as an example to all of the locals, and killing Willy would weaken the lines of communication between the gangs. 

Spike decided to make the best of the situation and emptied out the cash register into his pockets. He took off his coat and proceeded to start loading it with bottles of the best liquor and blood that were on the racks. As he was taking down a bottle of Scotch, his jaw dropped, and the bottles slid off of his duster and shattered. A gleaming knife was imbedded in the wall beside the bottle that he was taking down. He tossed away the ninety-dollar bottle of Scotch, oblivious to the noise it made as it shattered, and jerked the knife out of the wall. It was covered in Japanese engravings and was warm to the touch, and he recognized it immediately. He also knew that the man who had wielded it was very dead. Massacres like this had been the Soldier of Fortune's stock in trade, but Vocah had killed him years ago while Spike watched helplessly. The conditions in the bar meant that either the Soldier had somehow returned from Hell, or someone had stolen his trademark. 

Spike briefly considered the possibilities, Angel and Darla had both managed to return from Hell once, but they both had help, and while the Soldier had been an excellent assassin, there was no one who liked him enough to orchestrate something like this. Spike paused to amend that statement. There was one person, but no way in hell did he have that kind of resources. 

Spike had never managed to recover any of the Soldier's weapons after his fight with Vocah. He probably took them as trophies. Vocah was dead now, courtesy of Spike's ponce of a sire, but he could have sold the weapons to almost anyone. The idea of someone else impersonating the Soldier bothered him. The Soldier of Fortune had been a legend in his unlife, especially after what he had done to a certain British Slayer at the end of his illustrious career, and even though Spike was fairly disloyal as a general rule, it made him sick to think that some bloody sodding fledge had ripped off the trademark of his former friend and was probably doing jobs for Europe's worst denizens using his name.

Spike decided that he was going to find whoever was responsible for this travesty and kill him very, very dead. If the perpetrator was a demon, his chip would ignore him, and he would be at the mercy of the Big Bad, and even if he were human, his chip wouldn't activate until after he had thrown the knife he was currently holding. His head would hurt like hell for a day or so, but the enemy would be dead for a lot longer.

He put his jacket back on and put the knife in an inside pocket; a liquor raid was the last thing on his mind as he stormed out of the bar. He was on a mission to avenge the memory of a legend, and the closest thing he had ever had to a real friend. Getting plastered could wait. The Big Bad was back in Sunnydale, and somebody was going to die screaming.

"We're so close, Buffy. If we can just make it last a little longer, it'll be perfect." Willow was very chipper as she and Buffy talked in the graveyard. 

"Yeah, and once we can use the sunsphere, vampires won't stand a chance against you." Tara was doing her best to back up her girlfriend, but Buffy still didn't seem convinced.

"Why hasn't anyone else thought of this, though?" Willow tried to interrupt her, but Buffy kept going. "I mean, if it was this simple, why haven't any other Slayers used a weapon like this?"

"I thought that the Slayer was always solitary. Other Slayers haven't had anyone to do spells for them." Tara was more subdued than Willow but equally hopeful. 

"Buffy, I know that the Soldier of Fortune bothers you, but you've beaten worse with our help. The sunsphere will dust him in seconds. He thinks that he's invincible, but he's only a vampire, and you're the Slayer, Buffy, that means he's the one who should be afraid of you." Tara watched as Willow ranted in her own trademark style with her hand on Buffy's shoulder. Sometimes she was jealous of Buffy; Buffy had been Willow's best friend for years before Tara had met either of them. Willow meant everything to her, and the thought of ever losing her frightened Tara any time she thought about it. As Willow finished, she took a step back and instinctively reached for Tara's hand. Tara remained expressionless as she took Willow's hand, but she smiled internally. Sometimes she wished that she had known Willow longer, but she knew that Willow loved her.

"Cutting right to the chase there, eh, Will." Buffy grimaced slightly as her friend said exactly what she didn't want to admit. "Look, I get the whole vampire-Slayer thing, but Kelan was as strong as the Master, and he didn't last five minutes against this creep. Besides, you heard Giles, the Soldier of Fortune hunts Slayers and he's never failed; the Council is terrified of him." As she thought back to the previous night, she felt uneasy. There was something familiar about the vampire she had encountered, something she still couldn't put her finger on. "I know that you want to help, and you do. I would have never made it this long without you and Xander, but…" Buffy paused, trying to work up the nerve to say it. She was going to have to tell them before too much longer; she knew she couldn't hide it forever.

She never got the chance to finish as a mace came crashing down towards her head and she jumped out of the way. Willow and Tara tried to run but were cut off by two vampires with razor-sharp pikes. The mace-wielding vampire was backed up by a trio of his brethren, each of whom was carrying an axe. Finally, a vampire with a large broadsword closed the circle. Buffy quickly realized that retreat was not an option; she was going to have to fight the heavily armed pack of seven and look out for Willow and Tara at the same time. As the original vampire swung his mace at her in a horizontal arc, she ducked under it and popped up to hit him in the jaw; the three with the axes were on her before she could do anything and she instinctively used the first creature as a shield. The blow aimed at her neck caught it in the chest and stuck, embedded in the undead creature's sternum. The other two utilized a better strategy, quickly moving onto each side of her, feinting in tandem to keep her off balance. She quickly began to feel like Keanu as she twisted and dodged to evade the various swipes and jabs. Finally, one of them overextended on a thrusting movement, and she quickly staked him. She caught the axe in midair and used it to block an overhand blow from the other vampire, she then brought the axe up quickly, catching under the bottom edge of her opponent's weapon and disarming him. The handle of the axe she was holding wasn't sharp, but it was wood and it was enough to dispatch the newly weaponless demon. The only surviving axe-wielder had managed to wrench its weapon free from its screaming companion by this point, but a kick to the gut from the Slayer followed by a fierce overhand blow from an axe eliminated it from the fight within seconds. Willow and Tara were successfully avoiding pike thrusts so far, but each successive attack was getting closer and closer to doing damage. Buffy ran over, brandishing her newly acquired axe, and the two demons quickly shifted their focus to the angry Slayer. She cut the heads off of their pikes with two quick strokes and dispatched them easily with the stolen axe. She spun around quickly when she heard Tara scream and saw the last vampire holding Willow with its sword across her throat.

"Lord Aurelius send his greetings, Slayer. Soon he'll do to you what I'm going to do to her." Just as the creature opened its mouth to bite Willow, the girls all heard the distinct crunch of breaking bone as the heel of a man's boot crashed down on its shoulder and collarbone. A blonde man in a leather duster grabbed the sword from its nerveless fingers and neatly decapitated the helpless vampire with one backhanded slash. 

"What? Get ash all over her bloody coat?" Spike was in full gameface and obviously irritated as he walked over and killed the helpless creature rolling on the ground in pain from the axe blow to its chest. 

"Spike, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Buffy was glad that Willow was unhurt, but she still hated Spike, despite his occasional acts of heroism.

"Certainly not saving you and your little friends, if that's what you're thinking." He jammed the sword into the ground and approached the much shorter women. Buffy stepped up to face him as a relieved Tara threw her arms around Willow. "Look, Slayer, we need to talk, now."

"I don't have anything to say to you, Spike, I thought you understood that."

"Oh, no, Slayer? This mean anything to you?" He held up a razor-edged throwing knife, and Buffy's eyes widened. 

"Where did you get that?" She reached for the knife and he pulled it away.

"At Willy's, a few yards from the owner's dead body."

"Willy's dead?" Buffy was stunned. Willy had always been off limits; nothing would have ever touched him.

"Drained dry. His bar's full of messily slaughtered demons. The bloke that did it calls himself the 'Soldier of Fortune,' though whether or not it's really my old mate Jules has yet to be determined."

"What do you know about him?"

"Plenty. What does the old man know about what happened to his weapons after he fought Vocah?"

"I don't know. Giles is still trying to contact the Council to get the records about him."

"I need to talk with the Watcher, Buffy. If this is an imposter, I'm going to kill him. If not, more than likely he's going to kill you." Spike's voice was very cold as he talked to Buffy, and she couldn't tell whether or not he liked the idea of the Soldier finishing her when he couldn't. She had hated Spike for a long time; he had been Angelus' right hand man, and she still held him partially responsible for what had happened to Kendra. His disgusting obsession with her hadn't helped, especially his Buffy sexbot. When she thought of Spike toasting her death with the Soldier and a foot of ale, she felt a powerful urge to vomit. 

"Let's go." She turned to walk towards Giles' home, and the other three followed her. Buffy never saw a pair of golden eyes watching her from the darkness in the graveyard, and she never heard the muffled footsteps as her stalker silently crept away.

Rupert Giles walked out onto his back porch with a scowl across his face. He hated Spike as much as anyone, and he absolutely refused to allow him back inside his home, no matter what information he might have. Spike was, and always had been, their enemy. He had tried to kill them, both as leader of his own gang and as the lackey of Angelus. He had betrayed them to Adam and tried to split their group apart. Finally, he had emotionally tormented Buffy in some sort of misguided attempt to seduce her. Giles had known Buffy for half a decade, acting as her Watcher and mentor all through high school and the first two years of her college career. Following the unforgivable disappearance of her biological father and then her mother's tragic death he had grown progressively closer to her, and he realized that, as a bachelor in his late forties, Buffy was the closest thing he would ever have to a daughter. As a watcher and a surrogate father, his reasons to hate Spike were myriad, and the thought of Spike killing Buffy, or worse yet, shagging her, sickened him. Knowing that he was going to have to have a civil conversation with the obnoxious blonde vampire made him furious, and he gritted his teeth as he came face to face with "William the Bloody."

"Spike, you have ten seconds to say something worthwhile or I am going to stake you, and I am going to enjoy it."

Spike was only slightly taken aback by Giles' hostility, but he decided to cut through any sort of preface on what he was going to say. "I don't think you're fighting the real Soldier of Fortune. Jules was my mate and I had to watch while Vocah killed him. I think the vampire you're fighting is a bloody imposter. How's that?"

Giles had briefly considered this possibility, but Buffy had identified the Soldier from a picture. With this revelation coming from Spike, he found it less than convincing. "Buffy saw him, Spike. She recognized a picture of his face."

"How good a look did she get at him?" Spike raised his eyebrows as he questioned the Watcher. "He always had a thing about covering his face." He sounded very sure about what he was saying. Giles wasn't sure that Spike was trying to mislead them, at least not yet.

"In the crypt, after he fought Kelan, the scarf came off his face and we made eye contact." Buffy responded to Spike's question in an even tone. She didn't like Spike either, but hopefully they could get some information from him.

"So, you got one look at him in a dark crypt." Spike wasn't convinced. "What color was his hair?"

Buffy sighed, fairly sure that she knew where he was going. "It was too dark for me to tell."

"Exactly. It's blonde, by the way, more golden than mine." His expression softened and became less annoyed as he continued. "He's been bleaching it since before he was sired, used to take a lot of bollocks for it. He would never say why he did it, but I've got a pretty good idea." Spike was slowly starting to ramble as he thought about his former partner in crime, and Giles hoped to use this against him. "Look, if you couldn't even tell what color his hair was, how can you be sure you've got the right bloke? This could be any Nancy boy in titanium body armor prancing about like he's the bloody Soldier of Fortune, and you'd never be the wiser."

Giles caught Spike just as he paused and attempted to direct the conversation back onto a more productive route. "You said you saw Vocah kill him. What happened? I'd like to compare an eyewitness account against the Council's records." Giles didn't have the Council's records yet, but he was fairly sure that Spike had little or no reason to lie. The Council, on the other hand, had probably edited the records of the Soldier's death to suit their own purposes. They desperately needed some tactical information about their latest opponent, as they were dealing with another Slayer-hunting vampire. Worse yet, Giles had other suspicions about Buffy's current condition. He honestly wanted to believe Spike's theory, hoping that this was a false alarm. But regardless of whom they were fighting, this swordsman had defeated a master-level vampire one-on-one, and the idea of an imposter doing that seemed more than a bit far-fetched to Giles.

"They were on top of a building at the end. " Spike's voice had a numb, angry quality to it as he recounted the tale of his friend's last battle. "They fought all night, moved all over Manhattan, but close to dawn, they wound up on top of this ten-story office building. Vocah was using his Darkscythe, and Jules had a ninja-style chain-sickle. He figured that it would make for an even fight— he was big on sportsmanship, fair competition, all that rot." Spike paused again, recalling what had happened. "I watched the end of the fight from the building across the street. I offered to help; together we could have taken Vocah. There's no way he could have killed us both before Jules took him out. Not a day goes by that I don't wish he would have let me." Buffy and Giles obviously didn't care for the new direction of his narrative, and their icy stares got him back on track quickly.

"Anyway, the Soldier was using a titanium alloy chain-sickle, but the Darkscythe is adamantium. Vocah shattered his blade; wanker thought it was over until Jules used the chain of his broken weapon to disarm him." Spike smiled in spite of himself, but then his eyes became haunted by the memory of what he was about to say. "Vocah was down on his knees. It was over. Jules drew his sword and raised it to take Vocah's head off." Spike sighed despite his lack of breath. "He never saw it coming. Nobody knew what the Darkscythe could really do. The bleeder generated a copy behind his back and slammed it clean through the Soldier's chest. He dropped his sword, and staggered back in pain, then he just dusted like he had never even been there." For the first time since they had met him, Spike's voice actually had a sorrowful tone to it.

"I had to run if I was going to beat the sunrise, and by the time I could come back, any indication that they had ever fought was gone. I spent a month trying to find Vocah, but he exists outside of our dimension. There was nothing I could do." Spike looked away as he expressed his regret over his inability to avenge his fallen friend.

"I hate Angelus. He made my life a living hell for a century, he's an embarrassment to our species, and I still blame him for what happened with me and Dru." Buffy and Giles had just enough time to wonder where this was going before he finished. "But when I heard that he got his hands on a copy of the Darkscythe and slammed it through Vocah's maggot-riddled skull, I could have flown to L.A. and kissed the soul-infested ponce."

Spike looked back at Buffy and Giles. "Vocah must have stolen his equipment and sold it. It would explain the armor-clad punk you saw, and these." Spike flashed the knife he found at Willy's. Giles held out one hand, and Spike handed him the knife. As soon as he had a chance to hold it up to the light and verify its authenticity, he handed it back instinctively. It wasn't until Spike had already pocketed the weapon that Giles realized what he had done and sorely regretted it.

"It's the same style of shuriken that this swordsman used on Kelan's minion. Buffy has one as well." Giles was still trying to figure out why this enemy was leaving these kinds of mementoes everywhere he went. He was obviously either stupid, arrogant or both, as Buffy had trained with throwing knives for the past several years. As well-crafted as they were, Buffy's Slayer strength was probably sufficient to send one of those knives through titanium plate.

"Jules spent a couple decades in Japan after a bad run-in with some Indian nature spirits. He's been using knives like these ever since." Spike smiled as an old memory came to him. "He killed this poor bloke from at least two hundred yards once. Champion of the Powers That Be, my arse." Spike noticed that he was getting a very icy stare from Buffy and Giles again and got back on track with the narrative. "Anyway, he had a good-sized arsenal of Japanese weaponry, most of it blessed or cursed by some warlock or other. He had unbreakable knives, perpetually sharp swords, demon-smiting blades, and all that rot." 

Spike paused again; he knew that he was being pumped for information. He had known ever since Giles said he wanted to compare an eyewitness account to the Council's records. Buffy had said earlier that he was still trying to get the records. The Soldier had always attributed his success to the fact that his real identity and abilities were a well-kept secret, one Spike knew and had no intention of sharing with those who would be his enemies. All he had done so far was make some generalized threats and "reveal" things that they probably already knew, but that wouldn't last for much longer. Spike was leaving, and an obnoxious smirk crossed his face as he realized how. "Did I mention that if this really is my mate Julian, we're going to drink a case of Guinness to celebrate his fourth Slayer kill?"

Giles' first punch knocked Spike flat, and he spit a good deal of blood as Giles kicked him in the gut. Buffy was shocked as she heard Spike's ribs break from subsequent kicks; she hadn't seen Giles this angry since he tried to challenge Angelus more than three years ago, and that was the night Jenny died. The man who had once called himself"Ripper" grabbed Spike by the collar of his shirt and mercilessly hauled him to his feet as he pulled a stake from the back of his belt. He had been prepared to do this for a long time. He had been planning this moment as he watched Spike laugh while Angelus beat him within an inch of his life; he thought about it every time he handed Spike a cup of blood, every time he sat down to an episode of "Passions" and every time Spike leered suggestively at Buffy. His honor as a gentleman had held him back in the past, but he would see Spike and his mercenary friend in Hell before they lay a cold hand on his Slayer again. 

As the stake came down, Spike twisted his body so that it harmlessly slid between his left arm and chest rather than pierce his silent heart. He grimaced slightly as Maggie Walsh's chip shocked him when he shoved the watcher away, causing him to lose his grip on the stake. Spike smoothly released the stake and caught it in his right hand as he dove over the railing of Giles' porch. He rolled smoothly as he touched the ground and came to his feet in one seamless motion.

"You dropped this, mate." Spike tossed the stake back up to the Watcher with a grin across his face. "Remember what I said about the Soldier. We'll both have to stay with it if we want to survive this one." Giles angrily snatched the stake out of thin air as Spike disappeared into the night. Spike hadn't even tried to avoid that potential kill shot, and Giles felt like an idiot for even trying what he had just done.

Buffy placed a hand on Giles' shoulder, and she felt him relax slightly at her touch. She never felt as though she deserved the kind of paternal affection that Giles felt for her. He would have willingly died for her, and all she had ever done was make his life difficult. It always bothered her to see him this agitated about protecting her; they both knew that the worst Spike could do was taunt them, but Giles would have attacked him even if he was unchained by the chip. Buffy pulled the older man to her and he turned to face her as he stepped back. "Feel better?"

"If he ever did anything to you, I swear I'd…"

"Spike's full of crap, Giles. It's been so long since he was the Big Bad that all he knows how to do anymore is taunt people. Even without his chip, he wouldn't last five minutes against me. And when he decides to stop playing games and actually fight me, the high and mighty Soldier of Fortune won't do any better." Buffy only believed about half of what she was saying, but she said it anyway as she wrapped her arms around Giles' waish** and lay her head against his chest. Giles slowly put his arms around her as she finished, and they stood there silently for a moment.**

Buffy looked up to face him, and he made eye contact immediately. "I'll make it through this, but if Spike rears his bleached blonde head again, I'll cut it off and give you his ashes in a plastic Baggie. Nothing's going to happen to me, Giles, I promise." She wanted to just tell him the truth about what had been happening to her for the past several weeks, but she just couldn't bring herself to do it. Instead, she just smiled as she thought about Spike coughing up blood while Giles kicked him. Giles managed a wan smile as well, and she lay her head back against his chest. Spike, Aurelius and the Soldier would still be there tomorrow; tonight she was going to worry about the man who had been more of a father to her than Hank Summers ever had. 

[1:30]

He knew he shouldn't have let Spike get to him like that. Rupert Giles muttered curses as he bandaged his right hand. He had split the skin across several of his knuckles earlier that night when he had beaten the vampire to a bloody pulp, and it hurt like hell. Spike, on the other hand was probably off somewhere laughing about how he had made him overreact, oblivious to the damage Giles had done to him. Given vampires' superhuman regenerative abilities, he would be fine by morning, his worst injuries faded to dull bruises. "Next time I'll just stake the bleeder and be done with it." He clenched his fist several times to stretch the gauze and drained the snifter of Scotch on the counter beside him. Quentin had been horrified by the suggestion that the Soldier could be alive, and had agreed to send over the Council's restricted files immediately. Giles had a fairly good idea why Quentin was so frightened; Bridget had been his Slayer after all, but he had never been able to learn the details. Bridget was at least as good as Buffy, maybe better, and the Soldier killed her at the end of their first confrontation.

The Council was shocked; they always were when a Slayer of that caliber was killed, but something was different this time. The details of the fight had been shrouded in secrecy from all but the leaders of the Council. Giles was assigned to research then, he was a full member of the Council but he was never informed as to what really happened. It was almost worse not knowing. At the time, he had just finished a century-old field report on Angelus; the Scourge of Europe had once spread a Dutch Slayer across half of Amsterdam, and the Council never actually found all of the pieces, yet the account of the incident remained unsealed. 

Whatever happened to Bridget must have been far worse to cause that kind of panic. Quentin was the only living human who really knew what happened that night. The Soldier knew that they had ordered his assassination within a day of Vocah being summoned; he killed the directors and their families one at a time until the day Vocah sent him to hell. None of it ever made sense to Giles. The Council didn't go around summoning demons to carry out assassinations, and no vampire had ever launched an attack of that kind against the Council. It seemed like an act of vengeance for some great wrong, but no one had ever figured out what.

Giles banished all thoughts of the Soldier from his mind when a Council operative corroborated Vocah's story about the fight on the rooftop, but now it was all crashing back down on him. He only hoped that he could figure something out before Buffy became just another statistic, another dead Slayer with no one but him and the Scoobies** to mourn her passing.**

[3:00]

Buffy tossed and turned, desperately trying to sleep. It was almost 3 a.m. and she still found herself unable to rest. Finally, she crawled out of bed and walked to the courtyard. She had moved into the mansion after the fight with Glory and was living off the rent that a young family was paying to live in her old home. Between that and her mother's life insurance, she could support herself indefinitely. Anya had helped her invest the money in a healthy stock portfolio and the dividends supplemented the rent money nicely. She had told the others that was why she moved into the mansion; it gave her a place to train and allowed her to be financially stable in the wake of everything that had happened. She wouldn't be going back to college in the fall; problems with her mother and Glory had taken her attention away from her classes and her grade-point average had fallen below the minimum requirement for attendance in a California school.

Giles and Willow and the others had actually believed her, and they silently supported what they thought was an attempt to be financially responsible through a difficult period. Xander didn't seem to be quite as clueless about her motivations. He had started spending more time with her again, like back when they were all in high school, and he made sure that she got out. He had never confronted her about it, but she could tell he knew. If it hadn't been for Angel, she would have probably fallen in love with him sooner or later. But it was always about Angel. She had moved to the mansion to feel close to him; it had little to do with the money. Besides, what did she need with money anyway? She would be dead before much longer. 

Aurelius was campaigning to take over the Hellmouth, and he had brought a Slayer-hunting specialist, the Soldier of Fortune, with him. There was no way she could beat them both, at least not anymore. When she destroyed Glory, something had happened with the Key; its power had touched her, and she felt something inside her break. Ever since then, her strength had cut out on her in the middle of fights; it was like she simply ceased to be the Slayer for short periods of time, and they were getting more frequent. It was how Kelan had overpowered her so easily; she would have been dead if someone else hadn't appeared to fight him.

Julian was the name Spike had called the Soldier by; it was kind of hard to believe that after all of the bizarre, unholy fiends she had faced down, the one who was probably going to kill her was a pretty-boy vampire named Julian. At first she hadn't been able to understand why the Soldier didn't make a move against her in the crypt; she had been unarmed, and the sword he was carrying cut granite like butter. If he had attacked her, she wouldn't have stood a chance. Angelus had passed up numerous chances to kill her in favor of continuing their sick little game, and she could only assume that the Soldier's motivation was the same, but it still didn't completely make sense. Angelus would have hit her or taunted her or something; the Soldier had just walked away. 

She was back to him again. Every time she sat down to think about something, it always found its way back to Angel in the end. Two years, and two horrible relationships, after he walked out of her life, nothing had changed. What she felt for him hadn't faded any more than his mark on her neck. She belonged to him, body and soul, and nothing could ever change that. Buffy walked back inside and lay down in the bed she had shared with him so long ago, and sleep finally overtook her minutes later. All night she dreamed she was fighting a vampire with long hair and a sword, but his face kept changing to the point where she never knew who she would be looking at whenever they made eye contact, Angelus would shift out of his gameface and become Julian, only to fade back to Angel, but whenever she tried to get close she would be greeted by the arrogant leonine visage of the Soldier.

She was sure that the dream meant something, that there was some important meaning to the way the two men's faces blurred together, but despite her best efforts she was unable to figure out the dream's cryptic meaning before it all came to an end. In the end it was Angelus who disarmed her with one casual backhanded stroke; he pressed her up against the wall with his muscular frame and gently turned her head to the side. Buffy silently screamed in ecstasy as his razor-edged fangs pierced the sensitive skin of her throat and slowly raked her nails across his suddenly bare back as he drained her. The last thing she remembered before waking up was his lacerated tongue entering her mouth, and how his cold, poisonous blood was the most beautiful thing she had ever tasted.

[6:00]

Spike entered the old crypt slowly in case something else had taken up residence in the granite building. When a quick examination showed it to be empty, he began to look around. He wasn't sure how he knew to come to this place; it had just called to him as he passed through the graveyard. His exit from the Watcher's dwelling had been necessarily abrupt but unnecessarily painful; the important thing was that he had gotten the information he came for. The swordsman Buffy met had killed Kelan, who Spike recognized as a Master from the eastern part of Europe. He had been an enforcer for Aurelius once, but they had been estranged for decades, ever since Kelan challenged for control of the order. Jules had done jobs for both of them but had harbored a private disgust for their arrogant, unholier than thou attitudes. Kelan had been a great swordsman once and had always wanted to show off his skills whenever other vampires visited; he would cut down some unarmed minion with flamboyant, sloppy strokes and then congratulate himself for his "victory." Jules had always laughed under his breath at the older vampire and secretly hoped that someone would hire him to dust the old bastard. Apparently someone had.

Spike picked up the crushed pieces of Kelan's skull from the floor, the ancient demon's entire skeleton was a charred mess, and it was obvious that he had been hacked to pieces before he was burned alive. The ruined sword Spike found nearby provided all the evidence he needed as to the identity of the dead vampire on the floor beside him. Only a Master would leave behind a skeleton, and the sword bore Kelan's personal insignia on its handle. Whoever did this had had an alloy sword of some kind; steel couldn't have done this kind of damage to a well-forged sword, and there were deep gouges in the granite of the walls and floor around the body. Kelan's assailant had dismembered him, pinned him to the floor, set him on fire and then crushed his skull to prevent a resurrection spell from working. Sloppy fighter or not, Kelan was a Master vampire, and the number of creatures who could actually defeat him in a fight of this nature was so short Spike could count them on both hands. Regardless, Spike wouldn't allow himself to believe the Soldier was alive until he saw him with his own eyes. Julian had been his best friend and he doubted he could stand to lose him again. 

"Don't sweat it Will, I just aced the Slayer. Vocah's not a problem. You just stay here and decide which bar we're going to massacre to celebrate." Those were the last words he had ever said before Vocah killed him. Spike remembered the cocky smirk that accompanied those words, but it was always wiped out of his memory by his look of sheer horror as his gameface faded into a human visage before he exploded into dust. That was the face that haunted Spike's nightmares, and a million crazy nights with Dru and all the bourbon in Kentucky could never erase that image from his mind.

[11:00]

Xander looked down at the empty chair beside him and wished that Buffy were in it. She had become so withdrawn lately, and he was seriously worried about her. He could tell that it bothered Willow and Tara, but it never seemed to really get to them. As the gang grew up they were slowly growing apart; they had lives and responsibilities and truly significant others now, and they were all starting to move on. Oz and Cordelia had left years ago under less than pleasant circumstances. Willow had Tara, and they both had school, and witchcraft; he had overheard them both talking about moving to Seattle when college ended. There was a strong Wiccan community in the area and Willow could get a job in the computer industry. He had a real job, and a girlfriend, scratch that, fiancée, and an apartment. He didn't particularly want to dwell on the fact that Anya was spending abnormally long periods of time in the bathroom every morning and that her breath usually didn't smell quite right at breakfast; he decided to let his strong male denial abilities take care of that for now.

But the point was, he was like a real adult now, with a real life that had nothing to do with the bizarre occurrences of the "Boca Del Inferno." Buffy had nothing. She had been kicked out of school, her mother was dead, her father abandoned her years ago, and her love life made his high school experience look like a Ron Jeremy flick by comparison. Parker was human excrement, Riley turned out to be sorely lacking in the areas of compassion, self-control, and basic decency when the chips were down, and then there was Angel. There would always be Angel.

Buffy was at the mansion right now. She was sitting in a dark room, maybe crying, probably just clutching her knees to her chest and rocking slowly back and forth. She probably wouldn't get out of bed all weekend; the chances of her eating anything were even worse. She hardly ever ate anymore, but he had found containers of blood in her refrigerator the last time he was there. He didn't even want to think about what that meant. Buffy had saved them all so many times, and they couldn't even save her from herself. Some sidekicks they were. 

He finished setting the table and walked over to the stove where Willow and Tara were finishing a huge stack of pancakes. Willow handed him a heavy plate, and he carried it to the table with a fake smile for the girls' benefit. Anya kissed him as she walked into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of juice. He sat down silently as the last of the food made its way to the table. He politely added his praise to Anya's when she commented on the food, but with every bite he took, all he could taste was blood.

[1:30]

The blonde man carefully polished the edge of a long, straight Japanese sword, carefully inspecting the blade for nicks and scratches. When he was finally sure that there weren't any, he slid it back into its black-laquered sheath and set it down beside a small arsenal of traditional and slightly less traditional weaponry. The articles beside his couch ranged from an oversized chain-sickle to a customized semiautomatic .44 magnum with half a dozen fifteen-round clips laid out beside it to a series of thermite grenades and what appeared to be a high-yield napalm bomb. He wished he were back in his apartment in L.A. where he actually had places to store his ordinance that were remotely secure; as it was, he would have to kill anyone who came in and saw the arms stockpile in his spare bedroom. He felt lucky he could even find a furnished penthouse in Sunnydale; the thought of having to live in some little dump of an apartment seriously bothered him.

He poured himself a stiff drink, Cuervo and Blood, all he ever drank anymore, and sat down on the leather sofa that came with the place. He glanced at his watch; he had been expecting a call all day, and waiting was starting to get annoying. He lit a thick Cuban cigar and took long drags off it as he finished his drink entirely too fast. She was going to have to call before too long. He stood and stretched, cigar still firmly gripped between his teeth, and began the most advanced kata he had learned in his grossly extended lifetime. He was nearly a hundred moves into the training exercise when his phone finally rang. He finished the next few attacks with a dramatic flourish that no human could have hoped to match, and picked up the cordless phone off his couch. He smiled as he heard the voice on the other end and sat back down.

"Hey sexy…Not much, I've been pretty busy the last few days…Yeah, you could say that." He laughed; soon this job was going to be over and he could finish what he had started with the girl on the other end of the line. "What have you been up to, anything fun?...Okay, bad question, bad question, sorry…Thanks, baby, I can't have you mad at me, I wouldn't last five seconds against you in a bad mood…" She laughed at that, and he couldn't help but smile hearing it. She was the closest thing he'd ever found to perfection, beautiful, sensual, uninhibited and a brunette to top it all off. He definitely couldn't wait for this job to be over. "Seriously though, how's your week been…Good, I knew you'd like him. He's a good dude, and he knows what he's doing…Hey, you know me, I appreciate professionalism." It had been fifteen years since the fight in London, fifteen years in a place that scared even him. There were days when he thought he'd never see earth again, never talk to a another pretty girl, never beat the living crap out of some overconfident poser and actually have the satisfaction of killing them, never go out and get stupid drunk with Will, never get laid, ever again. He had learned a lot in fifteen years, Earth was as close as it got to a vampire paradise, especially compared to any alternatives, and he was never leaving again.

"I don't know, she seems kind of unstable…Just not with it, you know. She's all reclusive and brooding all the time…I hear that. But it's not just that. Her fighting ability jumps all over the place, one minute she's taking out whole gangs like it's her friggin' job, the next she's dropping fights to posers who shouldn't be on her level. I don't get it…She wouldn't last five seconds against either of us…Yeah, pretty much…Hopefully this won't take too much longer, but it's really all up to Aurelius…I hate the smug old SOB, but the ball's in his court for now…Hey, you know it…" He paused; this was the question he always dreaded, it was impossible to lie to her about anything, and she always worried when the response wasn't good. "Not great, but I'll make it…I'll be fine, I'm good, you know, five by five…"

"Very funny. Be careful, J, I don't want to lose you."

"You won't, look, this job's nothing, and the payoff's huge. By the end of the month you'll be out and we'll paint LA red…I always do…All right, I'll see you next Saturday…Manana, Baby." It bothered her at first that he never said good-bye, but she accepted it pretty quickly when he explained why. Good-bye was final; it was what you said to someone who you might never see again. He was going to see her again, so his farewells always reflected this.

He turned off his phone and dropped it as he took another long drag off his cigar. He'd see her "later." As soon as the job was over, then his life would start again, "later." He slid the remaining half of his cigar into a tubular silver case and sealed it. He restarted the kata he had been in the middle of while he was waiting for the phone to ring. The Soldier of Fortune was back, and he had years of business to attend to.

[To Be Continued]

** **

**Authors notes: This is set in the summer after BtVS Season 5 and A:tS Season 2. However I am writing during those seasons so I had to make up the endings for both seasons. I have done my best to supply readers with information as it becomes relevant to the story and furthers the plot (sometimes you have to withhold details in the course of writing a complex story). For the purpose of this piece, the following things happened at the end of the season. #1 The key was destroyed in Buffy's confrontation with Glory, no one remembers that Dawn ever existed, they remember the key only as a ball of energy. #2 Xander and Anya became engaged. #3 Faith is still incarcerated. Other than that, if you don't know something, you're probably not supposed to.**

Thanks for reading my humble contribution to the tens of thousands of pages of Buffy fic on the internet

Later,

**_Summersbro3_**

   [1]: mailto:lukescorpio@netscape.net



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